Items Tagged with 'housing finance reform'

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[Expert commentary] In an exclusive guest post, Mortgage Bankers Association President and CEO David Stevens presents the MBA's view on the "right" reform plan for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. How much should the government be involved in the mortgage market? Stevens presents the MBA case.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, will not run for re-election in 2018, the prominent Republican told his supporters on Tuesday. Hensarling may be on his way out of Congress, but he said Tuesday that he won’t stop working to further his agenda for the remainder of his term – including housing finance reform.

During his speech Monday morning at the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Meeting in Denver, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt reiterated his recent sentiments that it is time for Congress to take on housing finance reform because the conservatorship of the government-sponsored enterprises has gone on too long. And Watt wasn’t the only big-time housing official to call on Congress to tackle housing finance reform.

One of the leading voices in Congress on housing finance reform announced Tuesday that next year will be his last year in the Senate. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, announced Tuesday that he plans to retire at the end of his term in the Senate and will not seek re-election in 2018.

Initial talks from the Trump administration on reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not happening as quickly as originally anticipated due to a growing backlog of things to accomplish in Washington D.C. Despite the slowed-down timeline, some of the biggest housing finance groups joined together to remind housing officials to stay focused on reform.

The Milken Institute is gearing up to conquer the complexities of housing finance reform as the topic hopefully starts to become a major talking point in Washington D.C. The institute announced a new policy team of mortgage veterans, who will probably sound familiar to most people in the industry.

The Mortgage Bankers Association was one of the first groups to publish their thoughts for the government on how to best tackle reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now as the list of people commenting on how to execute reform continues to grow, David Stevens, Mortgage Bankers Association president and CEO, decided to go back and highlight one of the MBA’s main points: The need for multiple guarantors.

[Commentary] Housing finance reform may be making its long-awaited comeback on Capitol Hill. It’s been nearly nine years since the federal government first placed Fannie and Freddie under conservatorship. Housing finance reform is long overdue. If Congress can get it right, it will be well worth the wait. Lawmakers should consider three critical points.

[Expert commentary] Not too long ago, I posed to you a fairly significant question: Is America’s housing policy at a crossroads? Now may be the perfect time to ask such a question since our industry seems to have reached a bit of a plateau. Perhaps it’s time to revisit fundamental tenets of a housing policy that has gone unquestioned for decades.

On Thursday, while Department of the Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told members of the Senate about the Trump administration’s plans for housing finance reform, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said that the heavy lifting on housing finance reform needs to come from Congress.

This month inHousingWire magazine

[Subscribers only] Multigenerational living, where two or more adult generations live under the same roof, is becoming a growing trend in the U.S. Currently about 19% of Americans now live in a multigenerational household, the highest level since 1950. That amounts to about 60.6 million adults in 2014, up from 57 million adults in 2012. And homebuilders have taken notice, designing houses specifically catered to this segment.

Feature

Would-be homeowners are inundated with picture-perfect examples of new and remodeled homes brimming with upgrades. But in the real world, homebuilders and investors must calculate the rate of return on these sometimes fleeting trends, weighing what buyers want with what they can actually afford. This feature looks at which features buyers of different age demographics consider the most important, and what that means for sellers.

Commentary

We’ve found that the handling and posting of payments during bankruptcy has been a widespread issue in our testing environment. Specifically, there is increased risk exposure in pre-and post-petition payment application and treatment, both inside and outside of the bankruptcy plan. Servicers and sub-servicers have created manual workflow workarounds to address the issue, however, it does open the servicer up to more exposure to calculation errors.